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Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer vs Tableau comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos
Sponsored
Ranking in Reporting
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (7th)
Oracle Business Intelligenc...
Ranking in Reporting
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Tableau
Ranking in Reporting
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
294
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (2nd), Data Visualization (1st), Embedded BI (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2024, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 4.7%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer is 0.6%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau is 23.9%, up from 21.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

Carlos Larrad Salgado - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 27, 2022
Improved the quality of our KPIs, while reducing calls to the IT department
I don't like that when we use Colab packages, we get less functionality. For example, you can make groups of data with Excel or with the data sets from the packages, but when you use the Colab packages directly, you can only group the data when you analyze it with Analysis Studio. I think Cognos needs to improve more on this functionality. The user experience is also very important. Cognos is not very easy to understand sometimes, especially when they change the layout but keep the functionality the same. The help is not very graphic and they have no examples. Cognos has to make a big effort to help with understanding the functionality by improving the documentation. There is a lot of documentation, but the examples are hard to find and they should make their help section easier to understand for non-technical users.
Apr 12, 2024
Useful for business reports and helps to drill down accounting information
We use the solution for business reporting.  The tool's most valuable feature is table creation. One of the most important capabilities is the supplier assessment reports. These reports provide a balance during transactions, which is crucial for auditing. This feature is not standard in other ERP…
ROMIL SHAH - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 22, 2022
Provides fast data access with in-memory extracts, makes it easy to create visualizations, and saves time
When it comes to visualizations, Tableau has a limitation as compared to Power BI. It has a limited set of visualizations. Power BI has the entire marketplace, so you can connect and import many visualizations and use them, whereas Tableau has only 10 or 15 visualizations. There should be more visualizations, and there should also be data integration with more cloud providers. Tableau has recently launched a paid version for the documentation. So, documentation has become a little bit challenging when it comes to Tableau development because we do not have any tool to export the data out of it. It is a license-based feature that you need to purchase to prepare documentation. So, on the documentation front, for preparing clear documentation for any dashboard, it would help if we get an embedded option, rather than buying a license for each user for the documentation. To document anything, if I have to connect to each workbook and see what has been written as a formula and then document in the Word document, it is pretty time-consuming. We have the Microsoft stack, and we are currently evaluating Power BI because Tableau has a limitation of 50 columns for a drill-down report. If we want more than 50 columns, we have found a hack, but there is no ready-made option for doing it. So, we have to use another tool in case we need a drilled report with more than 50 columns. There are many instances where users need 80 or 90 columns for their analysis, and switching between two technologies becomes a challenge. It is not a cost-effective approach for us. Their support should be improved. We are not happy with their support. Whenever we raised queries, we were pointed to a few blogs, and we didn't get a proper solution from them. Their licensing should also be improved. They want us to purchase a Tableau Creator license for business users, whereas Power BI Desktop is free for business users. They should come up with a basic license with one or two connectors that our business users can use for preparing their visualizations. Tableau also charges us per user for users who want the data only through email.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"The main difference that I like about Cognos compared to other solutions is its data splitting functionality. We have all our company data inside the Cognos environment and so we prefer to split the information Cognos itself. It's more efficient this way."
"Security administration tools are powerful and flexible."
"The solution's initial setup process is easy."
"The most valuable features are Report Development (Functionality) and Information Distribution (Flexibility)."
"The tool can join data from different sources, write back to databases, generate alerts, and be customized to our preferences. It's an enterprise BI tool that's more powerful than just visualization tools like Power BI or Tableau."
"One of the strong suits of Cognos is its robust corporate reporting capability."
"The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson."
"The tool's most valuable feature is table creation. One of the most important capabilities is the supplier assessment reports. These reports provide a balance during transactions, which is crucial for auditing."
"The dashboards are amazing, with different report types and stunning visuals. Most importantly, Tableau's AI with machine learning automatically predicts features and reports based on historical data. These are the three most valuable features for me."
"Tableau has comprehensive, insightful charts, which allow you to build stunning dashboards and enrich your support decision-making."
"Tableau has many good features. It is user-friendly, has a simple-to-use interface, and has a customizable dashboard."
"It's a very good, flexible product, and it's easy to learn."
"It's easy to use."
"It is an excellent tool for data capture, processing, and visualization."
"We found Tableau has the quickest learning time out of the few other BI reporting tools that we have used."
"It's very easy to visualize data with this product. The visualization maps of and frames that we have been able to cross-reference has been excellent."
 

Cons

"I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information."
"Cognos charts are not as fast as those of the other tools, even with DQM (dynamic query mode)."
"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."
"I would like to have predictive and forecasting capabilities in Cognos. It's one thing to do reporting, and another thing to easily predict or forecast certain data points, which is very important for all the clients."
"One thing that we really want is the ability to have data portrayed on an image. Cognos is not able to do it at the moment, and that's becoming a requirement from the business side: having an image and then plotting your dataset on top of the image as a map."
"Chart quality: many other competitors have charts and graphics that look much better and that provide dynamic effects. Cognos doesn't."
"The charts and graphics are weak."
"I would like to see is more easy building, movement in the reports, and dashboard functionality within reporting. Overall more simple elements within reports. If the elements are simple then you don't have to render a full page, but you can move separate parts in the page."
"Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer needs to improve its performance and HTML reports."
"The data entered into Tableau must be clean. Otherwise, it won't work properly."
"The interface can be improved, in part because there is no indication that something is running or that it's processing."
"In the next release, there should be more information describing each chart because users have a difficult time telling them apart. They should also include the animations/videos, similar to Power BI."
"The extraction, transformation and loading of data in Tableau takes a lot of time and we do not have confidence that Tableau is showing all the data we need."
"The forecasting feature in Tableau in my view is too limited because it must have dates but I should be able to predict the outcome of an event without having a date as part of the input."
"The pricing is a bit higher than the competition. They'll need to lower it to stay competitive."
"The solution could improve the scalability, it is difficult to make changes."
"With performance tuning, it generates a pretty complex query when it is not required."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cognos is super expensive compared to Tableau ($70/month) and Power BI ($20/month) — I think Cognos is roughly $200 a month."
"There is need to assess the purchase license accordingly so as to avoid audit penalties."
"I rate the product price as four or five on a scale from one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."
"There is some additional licensing that we needed to purchase because we were touching data outside of our core data platform. The cost was approximately $25,000 for the additional licenses, which were approximate 45 licenses. For the application itself, updates, and the core platform it was approximately $50,000. Giving a total cost of $75,000 annually for our usage of IBM Cognos."
"The pricing of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."
"The pricing and licensing policies are comparatively cheaper than other products in the market ."
"The licensing costs are a little bit higher for IBM Cognos. I don't think there is any additional cost apart from the licensing charges."
"IBM Cognos is priced reasonable. However, it is more expensive than Power BI and Tableau."
"Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer is more expensive than its alternatives. You need to pay additional costs for implementation."
"This solution is a bit expensive. The pricing options have become more difficult over the years. I think they are bordering on pricing themselves out of the market. They need different pricing options for various-sized businesses. Where my organization is a large organization, we are happy to pay a higher price because we can leverage the products very extensively. For smaller enterprises, different pricing options would be good."
"For data extraction and analysis, Tableau is better than any other tool I have used with the same pricing model."
"The cost of the solution should be improved."
"Deployment of dashboards to viewers and unit supervisors can be prohibitively expensive."
"The pricing for Tableau is the same as the other products in the market."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"It is more expensive than other solutions."
"The price of Tableau could improve. The license is too expensive."
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Comparison Review

it_user6330 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 2, 2013
MicroStrategy vs. Tableau
After a recent presentation, several attendees asked me about the applications of Visual Insights and Tableau. Many companies are investing in both tools and are trying to figure out the right tool for specific applications Tableau has found its sweet-spot as an agile discovery tool that analysts…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
58%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
5%
Government
4%
Government
29%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Educational Organization
8%
University
8%
Educational Organization
40%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Seeking lightweight open source BI software
It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik ...
What do you like most about IBM Cognos?
The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools.
What needs improvement with IBM Cognos?
I need improvements, particularly with the Framework Manager, which has an outdated user interface from older version...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer?
Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer is more expensive than its alternatives. You need to pay additional costs for...
What needs improvement with Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer?
Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer needs to improve its performance and HTML reports.
Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?
Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have be...
Which would you choose - Tableau or SAP Analytics Cloud?
Tableau is easy to set up and maintain. In about a day it is possible for the entire platform to be deployed for use....
What do you like most about Tableau?
Tableau is a fantastic tool that provides impressive dashboards and customized reports.
 

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
No data available
Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

More than 23,000 leading organizations across multiple industries use Cognos. Some examples of Cognos customers include BMW Financial Services, Quinte Health Care, Troy Corporation, Michigan State University, and GKN Land System.
Georg Fischer Central Plastics
Accenture, Adobe, Amazon.com, Bank of America, Charles Schwab Corp, Citigroup, Coca-Cola Company, Cornell University, Dell, Deloitte, Duke University, eBay, Exxon Mobil, Fannie Mae, Ferrari, French Red Cross, Goldman Sachs, Google, Government of Canada, HP, Intel, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Macy's, Merck, The New York Times, PayPal, Pfizer, US Army, US Air Force, Skype, and Walmart.
Find out what your peers are saying about Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer vs. Tableau and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
813,418 professionals have used our research since 2012.